Athens & Sparta Arrives!

My pre order copy of Athens & Sparta by Columbia Games finally arrived today. I've only had chance to unwrap and open the box (so I still have the unrivalled fun of the stickers ...) but the game certainly looks interesting. Obviously as a Columbia block game it has the usual step reductions and it's card driven with the map being hex based - all of which we have seen in other of their games. The productions values are the same as their other games with the same file box and sleeve arrangement with an unmounted board etc. but that's only to be expected.

I could quibble about the release delay (1 month) and the lack of any sort of communication from Columbia about that (I found out from checking their website) despite them having my email address and moving from a "Coming in September" to a "Coming Soon" message without warning. But now that I have it this seems a little churlish.

Expect my first impressions once I've got myself into the appropriate Zen state to do the stickering and run through the rules...

News: Athens and Sparta

If you're interested in block games the latest Columbia Games offering Athens and Sparta is due for release next month. Using a combination of traditional block mechanics and a card driven approach it looks interesting, through not revolutionary. But as it's a period I'm interested in (and one I'm not likely ever to collect enough miniatures to play on the table top) I'm probably going to pre-order it.

The game has an odd back story, this release is by Tom Dalgliesh rather than the originally touted game by Craig Besinque. There appears to have been a parting of the ways some time during the development process and Carig has taken his game to GMT Games to be published as Hellenes: Athens vs. Sparta. Superficially the games seems pretty similar with the Columbia offering seeming slightly simpler/shorter (which is what I was looking for anyway). But it will be interesting to see how they compare when the GMT game comes out (it's still on the P500 list).